He and his team have built a tool called Hatebase that scours the world’s tweets for hate speech. Hatebase is an effort of The Sentinel Project for Genocide Projection, a Toronto-based NGO. It indexes real-time utterances of all known epithets and their places of origin. If hateful tweets are geo-tagged, Hatebase can pinpoint a surge in racism to its origin, getting as “granular” as a six-block radius.

Hate speech, Quinn says, is one of the main precursors to violence and mass atrocity. By constantly monitoring the world’s social media chatter, Hatebase aims to build an early warning system for ethnic conflict, even genocide. He brings up the Rwandan Genocide, immediately before which the term “inyenzi”, meaning “cockroach”, was widely used on the radio in the ’90s in an effort to dehumanize Tutsis by Hutus. “Inyenzi” reached peak usage right before the mass killings began.

If it happened again today, the word would probably spike on social media too, giving NGOs and the international community an opportunity to intervene and prevent atrocities. “I’ll know it’s a success,” says Quinn, “when we have Amnesty International, Red Cross, Ushahidi and USAid pulling our data.” By offering its data free through an API, other organizations can plug Hatebase in to their own systems. Quinn sees the tool not as a sole predictor of conflict, but as a powerful data point that can be layered in with other information to paint a detailed picture of trouble brewing around the world.

I ask Quinn what might actually happen when something pops on Hatebase–say, a sharp rise in racist invective between two ethnic groups. He brings up the recent clashes between the Orma and and Pokomo tribes of Kenya. Rumours and misinformation have been spread, in large part via SMS messages, about stashes of weapons, theft, rape and violence. Periodic killings follow. If Hatebase noticed the spike in language, it could alert local government and NGOs, who could launch a PR campaign to dispel the inflammatory information, or find alternate means of resolving legitimate complaints. Of course, Kenyans use private SMS a lot more frequently than they use Twitter, so this example remains hypothetical for now.

Another hurdle for Hatebase is the fluidity and specificity of hate speech. New terms emerge daily and context is everything. To account for this, Hatebase encourages users to add to its ever-growing library of hyper-regionalized slurs. You can also report an instance of hate speech you’ve received, overheard or used yourself.

Quinn, who volunteers for Hatebase while away from his computer programming day job, says that the project’s goal is to expand from Twitter and crawl all social media platforms. The challenge will always be in massaging their algorithm to be context-aware, knowing the slight but vast difference between, for example, “my nigga” and “you niggers.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/hatebase-an-anti-genocide-app/feed/0Was free speech in Canada in good shape before the Whatcott ruling?http://www.macleans.ca/politics/was-free-speech-in-canada-in-good-shape-before-the-whatcott-ruling/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/was-free-speech-in-canada-in-good-shape-before-the-whatcott-ruling/#commentsWed, 06 Mar 2013 17:08:07 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=357482Probably not. But the justices did get a few things right this time around.

Free-speech advocates have been waxing wroth all week over the Supreme Court’s long-awaited ruling in the case of Bill Whatcott, an itinerant street-corner politician who fancies himself a one-man crusade against the gay conspiracy to infiltrate schools, media and Old-Testament-God-knows-what. University of Saskatchewan law professor Michael Plaxton took to the Globe and Mail to accuse the court of “all but strangling” some kinds of religious speech, and the paper’s editorial voice, cranky “Junius,” called the unanimous decision “too vague.” Andrew Coyne’s analysis for Postmedia was punctuated with exclamations like, “I cannot quite believe I am reading these words.” Religious and conservative bloggers even spoke of “the death of free speech in Canada.”

The ruling was appalling in a number of ways, most notably in its dismissal of any possibility of a truth defence against human rights commissions who hunt “hate speech.” The court specifically insists that true statements arranged in certain ways can be officially “hateful,” conceding a total lack of interest in truth and basically handing its banner over to the commissions’ targets. For liberals who share the goals of these commissions, this is a moral disaster that can only multiply Bill Whatcotts ad infinitum. People of the Whatcott type already believe themselves to be in special possession of suppressed facts, and now the court has said explicitly that spreading falsehoods is no part of their offence.

But since we columnists are in the business of telling truth, whatever a court thinks, it ought to be admitted that, dead or alive, free speech in Canada was never in such good shape. The Supreme Court’s decision is an elaborate partial rescue of standing precedent; the constitutionality of hate policing by provincial commissions was established many years ago, and the unpleasant surprise is only that it wasn’t killed on this occasion.

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin has a history of favouring tough First Amendment-style protections for speech, and the panel contained two Stephen Harper appointees who might have been expected to augment that position. Instead, the decision embodied a flaky, outmoded “balancing” act of the sort familiar from earlier jurisprudence. Bill Whatcott has a right to make loopy flyers with “Born gay? No way!” scrawled on them and gay Canadians apparently have a right for those flyers not to exist, since they are hateful.

This is actually an irreconcilable contradiction, but the court did its best to handle it. It pointed out that the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission’s powers have been circumscribed by statute so that there is no possibility of someone like Whatcott being jailed for refusing to co-operate with the negotiation/re-education process contemplated under the law. Some of the fines against him were upheld by the Supreme Court and he can still be jailed for defying the order to pay, but those fines, the court helpfully explains, are “compensatory, not punitive.”

One sees what fine jokes result when the state tries to make one plus one equal fried chicken. But as a practical matter, Whatcott probably need not pay. If Saskatchewan attempts to imprison him for Christian tract-making, the free-speech chorus already so evident as a consequence of these cases will instantly become international, grow loud enough to deafen and invite widespread disobedience and protest within the province itself. Without doubt, many gays and lesbians who respect classical liberal principles would join. (Those guys love a chorus!)

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court decision did actually grant Whatcott partial victory, finding that the Saskatchewan human rights statute was unconstitutionally broad in application. The decision states that the law can only be engaged by pure speech under very specific circumstances, and emphasizes that it is not enough to ridicule, demean, or offend a protected group. Satire and parody, however crude, emerge from the Whatcott ruling with superior legal armour. From now on, the only lawfully valid subject of human-rights commission attention is “delegitimizing” speech that characterizes a group as subhuman or specially menacing. And the court provides a useful list of identifying markers for such speech, though one doubts it will prove exhaustive.

For those of us who make a living in creative or intellectual expression, it is worth something to have the laws limiting it defined as clearly as possible while being compacted into a minimum volume. The Supreme Court has made the rules clearer, and this is not to be sneered at, even if its logic sometimes is—especially since the overall authority of human rights commissions has undergone net diminution in the process. It is just possible the chief justice wasn’t entirely asleep at the switch.

The Supreme Court has drawn a line between free speech and hate speech, but it did so with a slightly shaky hand.

The length of time it took the Court to provide a constitutionally acceptable approach to identifying hate speech—504 days from the hearing of the case to today’s decision—suggests spotting an “unacceptable” level of hate isn’t as straightforward as the justices seem to think.

At issue in today’s ruling were flyers distributed by William Whatcott containing a vile attack on gays that suggested exposure to homosexuals would “lead to the early death and morbidity of children,” among other odious beliefs. While no thinking person would find such thoughts acceptable on a moral level, whether the expression of such thoughts should be subject to state sanction presents a fundamental constitutional issue relating to freedom of expression under the Charter of Rights. The Court found that two of his four pamphlets fall under the Code.

Today’s decision keeps in place part of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code that prohibits expression “that exposes or tends to expose to hatred, ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of any person or class of persons on the basis of a prohibited ground.” The decision also largely upholds the most relevant precedent (the 1990 Taylor case), but with a few changes that narrow the definition and application of “hatred.”

First, drawing largely on the Taylor case, the judges confront the obvious problem that emotion is central to a person’s reaction to speech, and that an approach that interprets “hatred” should not be premised simply on eliminating feelings of dislike. The purpose of the legislation is to prevent the risk of harms associated with “extreme” examples of speech, such as discrimination. The Court settles on “detestation” and “vilification” to describe the harmful effects (abandoning a third word from the Taylor case, “calumny,” as unnecessary).

Second, the Court emphasized that the focus should be on the effects of the speech, rather than on the nature of the ideas expressed. “If the repugnancy or offensiveness of an idea does not exclude it from Charter protection under s.2(b), they cannot, in themselves, be sufficient to justify a limit on expression.” Thus a blanket prohibition on hateful ideas would clearly be contrary to the core of freedom of expression. The distinction drawn here is between such expression and expression “which exposes groups to hatred.”

Finally, the judges find that the phrase “ridicule, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of” in the Code does not meet the standard of “detestation” or “vilification” and should be severed from the legislation.

This approach faces a number of challenges, which the judges make their best attempt to address. How can this standard of detestation or vilification be identified? Feelings, even the deepest, most extreme feelings that result from hatred, are inherently subjective. We can’t rely on the feelings of a potential victim of hate speech; after all, people react to different ideas in different ways. Instead, the Court lays out what it calls an “objective” approach: would a “reasonable person,” knowing the full context and circumstances of the hateful speech, believe it likely to raise the risk of discrimination or some type of societal harm?

Courts have long relied on this mythical reasonable person to deal with the interpretation and application of inherently subjective concepts. The problem, of course, is that reasonable people might reasonably disagree. To some extent the Court has reinforced the idea that hate speech, like pornography, is something a reasonable person knows when he or she sees it. The Court hasn’t put forward a definition so much as it has attempted to lay down a threshold for acceptable speech. But that line is obfuscated by the very emotions it is purportedly based on.

A more fundamental problem is that the Court’s notion of a risk of “harm” that results from hate speech is ill-defined. Shouldn’t there be evidence that the expression of hatred had actual discriminatory effects? The judges acknowledge that the Taylor case was subjected to criticism along those lines: the Court’s approach does not do enough to ensure limits on free expression were “demonstrably justified.”

Today’s decision responds to these concerns by saying such criticism “ignores the particularly insidious nature of hate speech. The end goal of hate speech is to shift the environment from one where harm against vulnerable groups is not tolerated to one where hate speech has created a place where this is either accepted or a blind eye is turned.” As a result, the best approach to take is one of a “reasonable apprehension of harm.”

While laudable in theory, the scenario where hateful speech produces an actual harmful environment for vulnerable groups seems to imply a lowest common denominator expectation of the reaction broader society will have to the hateful speech. Why expect, however plausible, that a harmful environment will be produced rather than the opposite: where individuals drown out the haters with expression of their own?

The argument that hate speech is “insidious” doesn’t appear to give sufficient weight to free expression. In fact, the “reasonable apprehension of harm” approach seems to act in direct contradiction to the Court’s stated position that the standard of review should be based on the effects of the speech rather than the ideas contained within.

It is highly likely that the Court took so long to render a decision in this case because the judges had to work hard to come up with unanimous reasons everyone could agree on. (A rare 6-0 judgment, the result of the retirement of Justice Deschamps, who took part in the hearing but retired more than six months before the decision was rendered and so could not sign on). The result is a bit of a messy compromise, where the standard laid out for lower courts to follow ultimately boils down to “some hateful ideas are okay, but not the really hateful ones that a reasonable person thinks might cause discrimination or harm.”

For some people, this will all seem eminently reasonable. For others, it is a line-drawing exercise fraught with difficulty.

Emmett Macfarlane is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Waterloo.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-whatcott-case-drawing-a-line-between-free-speech-and-hate/feed/18B.C. man wages crusade against racist, offensive comments on Craigslisthttp://www.macleans.ca/news/b-c-man-wages-crusade-against-racist-offensive-comments-on-craigslist/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/b-c-man-wages-crusade-against-racist-offensive-comments-on-craigslist/#commentsMon, 18 Feb 2013 23:39:09 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=352109VANCOUVER – A British Columbia man is waging a fight against racist and offensive comments on the website Craigslist.
For more than a year, 64-year-old Cran Campbell of Delta B.C.,…

]]>VANCOUVER – A British Columbia man is waging a fight against racist and offensive comments on the website Craigslist.

For more than a year, 64-year-old Cran Campbell of Delta B.C., has been flagging the comments for removal from the website’s Rants and Raves section.

Campbell has also written letters to politicians across the country in his efforts to force websites with .ca domain names to follow Canadian laws on hate speech.

But Det. Const. Terry Wilson of the B.C. Hate Crime Team says that before charges can be laid, police must determine whether someone is trying to cause disdain or hatred towards one of five identifiable groups.

Wilson says investigators also have to determine if a comment has been made within Canada and within the police’s jurisdiction.

Campbell says he has been threatened several times, but a spokesman for the Delta Police Department says the last reported incident didn’t meet the threshold for prosecution.

There are many reasons to be glad Section 13 of our Human Rights Act is all but dead. For one, we already have hate speech laws, if you’re into that sort of thing. Section 319 of The Criminal Code of Canada bans the “wilful promotion of hatred” toward “an identifiable group.” It’s weird to me that the promotion of an emotion is against the law, but I get what the law is going for, and at least it’s enforced like any other law—by the police, selectively. If the identifiable group you promote hatred toward is Nickelback, the cops will probably leave you alone.

Human Rights Code violations on the other hand are investigated by the Code’s own little bureaucracy, the Human Rights Commission, and offences are judged by their own kangaroo court, the Human Rights Tribunal. Cases arise whenever a citizen makes a claim. If you make a successful hate speech claim, you can be awarded money in fines collected from the guilty party, even if you weren’t the target of their hate speech. And there’s nothing to stop an employee of the Human Rights Commission itself, say a lawyer who knows exactly how the process works, from making a claim.

We know this because that’s what happened. A former employee of the commission launched the vast majority of Section 13 cases during the past 12 years, winning all but one of them and collecting thousands of dollars. His name is Richard Warman, and you might call Section 13 “Richard’s Law.”

As I said, there are lots of reasons to applaud the scrapping of this ridiculous bit of legislation. But there’s one reason in particular that has me celebrating its pending demise: Section 13 was an anti-Internet law. Seriously, either it had to go, or the Internet did.

Richard Warman’s final Section 13 complaint was against “white nationalist” Marc Lemire, who hosts the Freedom Site web forum, where fellow “white nationalists” hang out and discuss “white supremacy nationalism.” But it wasn’t Lemire’s speech that Warman found hateful. It was Craig Harrison, a contributor to Freedom Site, who allegedly violated our hate speech laws by allegedly subjecting a group to hate. But Lemire ran the site, so he was the one Warman targeted. And by the vague, anachronistic language of Section 13, he was the right target.

That’s why Section 13 hates the Internet: it makes no distinction between the publisher of a comment and the publisher of a website. If Section 13 were to remain a law, and one that’s actually enforced by Canadians other than Richard Warman, then you simply couldn’t host any kind of interactive website. Youtube would go, Wikipedia would go, Macleans.ca and every other site with a comment section would go. It gets sillier the more you think about it. Warman has admitted to posing as a white supremacist and joining Freedom Site to help his “investigations.” If Section 13 were to stand, and website publishers were held liable for what their users post, then someone could theoretically join a site, leave hateful messages, file a complaint against the site’s owner, and then collect a cash prize, profiting from their own hate speech.

The Human Rights Commission came to their senses in 2009 when Warman’s complaint against Lemire reached their tribunal. Rather than rule that Lemire violated Section 13, tribunal member Athanasios Hadjis ruled that Section 13 violated our Charter, setting into motion a process that led directly to last week’s private member’s bill repealing the law itself. It’ll be off the books in a year, and not a moment too soon.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/the-internet-hates-section-13/feed/67Finding a rights balancehttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/finding-a-rights-balance/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/finding-a-rights-balance/#commentsSat, 10 Dec 2011 16:00:01 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/12/15/finding-a-rights-balance/The courts are limiting the powers of Canada’s human rights tribunals one case at a time

Over the last couple of years, dozens of school boards across the country have introduced anti-discrimination policies aimed at protecting gay, lesbian and transgendered students from bullying. In most places, the initiatives have passed unopposed. But when the public board in Burnaby, B.C., tried to do so last spring, battle lines quickly formed.

Conservative parents demanded to know what the policy would mean for students who objected to homosexuality on religious grounds. Would they be told their views are discriminatory? Would they be “re-educated” if they spoke their minds? Supporters, in turn, accused the group of perpetuating homophobia and in short order things got ugly. Epithets flew on the comments sections of news sites, including racial slurs singling out Asian and Muslim parents opposed to the proposal (one comment on a story on Xtra.ca, the website of Canada’s gay and lesbian newspaper, featured a slur directed at Asian businesses, with the threat, “You will be run out of town”). Competing protests turned board meetings on the issue into media circuses. Demonstrators hoisted signs bearing slogans like “All love is the same,” or “Leave our children alone.”

It’s a controversy, in short, that seems sure to spawn a profusion of human rights complaints—the sort that commissions and tribunals have been eager to weigh in on in the past (a hate-speech complaint over the insult on Xtra.ca is already in the works). But if the protagonists go down this road, they’re bound to find a changed landscape at the other end. Over the past few weeks, Canada’s highest court has issued decisions curbing the powers of human rights tribunals, or making it harder for certain complainants to get a hearing, while government MPs have thrown their support behind a private member’s bill that would get the federal commission out of policing speech altogether.

These moves, say long-time observers, reflect broad-based concern about the role and practices of the federal and provincial bodies, dating back to a series of unsuccessful hate-speech complaints levelled against Maclean’s and Ezra Levant, publisher of the now-defunct Western Standard. “I think that made people realize that they had grown beyond their original mandates,” says Joanne McGarry, executive director of the Catholic Civil Rights League. “They’re very useful in resolving disputes involving discrimination in the workplace, or the provision of goods and services. But once you get into free speech and freedom of religion, you’re talking about rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Unelected administrative tribunals are not the forum where these issues should be decided.”

Some of the changes have received scant attention—though their effect on human rights bodies may be profound. In late October, the Supreme Court ruled that human rights tribunals cannot rehear complaints of discrimination that other administrative bodies have already judged. It seemed like a bit of administrative housekeeping, but the decision is significant because it stops a growing practice called “forum shopping,” wherein a party who has lost before, say, a labour board, then files a human rights complaint in hopes of a different outcome. Then, a day later, the high court issued a more far-reaching decision blocking tribunals from awarding legal costs. The judgment sent ripples through the human rights legal community because these days most complainants arrive before the tribunals with lawyers and expert witnesses in tow. Without the prospect of winning back these costs, lawyers complained, many will simply throw in the towel.

Maybe so. But the judiciary is just getting started, and next up is the explosive question of whether commissions should be regulating speech. On Dec. 13, a Federal Court judge in Toronto will hear the matter of Marc Lemire, an Ontario man accused of spreading hate after visitors to his far-right website posted slurs against blacks and gays. At issue is the constitutionality of Section 13 of the Human Rights Act, the law that makes it discriminatory to spread “any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt” based on things like ethnicity and sexual orientation.

Most provinces have similarly written provisions on their books, empowering commissions to investigate hateful expression and make findings of fact. But after years of ruling in favour of complainants in such cases, the federal tribunal balked three years ago in the Lemire matter, declaring a $10,000 fine attached to Section 13 to be “inconsistent with the Charter.” That’s about as close as a tribunal can come to declaring a law unconstitutional.

Evidently, the adjudicator in the Lemire case sensed which way the legal winds were blowing. Within months, the Supreme Court is expected to issue its own decision in the case of Bill Whatcott, a conservative activist and ordained minister from Saskatchewan accused of purveying hatred in flyers that condemned homosexuality. By hearing Whatcott’s appeal in October, the court called into question a previous decision it made in 1990 affirming the constitutionality of Section 13 and its provincial imitators. The current chief justice, Beverley McLachlin, wrote the dissent in that case, and has since made clear her qualms about the provision. “It seems to me that an ordinary Lutheran pastor should be able to look at the act,” she said during the Whatcott hearing in October, “and without being a Supreme Court scholar, be able to know whether he can say this or that.”

Small wonder, then, that the Harper government has found the courage to back Tory MP Brian Storseth’s bill to repeal Section 13. If they don’t wipe it out, a judge probably will. And while the law still enjoys strong support among predominantly Jewish and South Asian communities, it rankles the party’s western base enough that Justice Minister Rob Nicholson rose in the Commons recently to say such matters are prosecuted under hate provisions of the Criminal Code.

Whatever the fate of Section 13, there’s a palpable sense among experts that human rights bodies are having their wings clipped—an unaccustomed experience for the long-established institutions. When the Section 13 controversies arose, notes David Eby, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, “many people were surprised by the powers of tribunals to look at these issues and make binding rulings and have extensive hearings.” From that flowed rancorous debate over fairness, he says, with critics complaining that respondents had to pay the cost of defending themselves, while commissions investigate complainants’ cases for free. Others accused the commissions of empire building—processing ever more frivolous cases in ever greater numbers to expand their domains (the number of complaints processed by the Canadian commission, for example, has doubled since 1980).

Still, supporters of the system warn against throwing the baby out with the bathwater. With an increasingly diverse population, the country is bound to face rising tension over issues of race, religion and sexual orientation, says Lucie Lamarche, the research director of University of Ottawa’s Human Rights Research and Education Centre. Many of the 7,000 or so people each year who file complaints to human rights bodies hail from disadvantaged segments of the population, she adds, and the whole point of the system is ensuring that those people have access to justice. “There’s nowhere else to go for the average Canadian [facing discrimination],” she says, “and we’d hope these people still believe that this is a fair society. So I believe in human rights institutions. I think they’re much more than the debate over hate speech ever let on.”

Yet even Lamarche concedes that the system could use revision, and suggests reaching into the past to find a way forward. “I’m convinced we have to go back to the basics, right to the ’70s or before, and think about why those institutions were designed the way they were,” she says. A review of the decision-making process may be in order in some cases, Lamarche adds, and can be done with a view to strengthening human rights institutions, not crippling them.

Refocusing the system on its original principles—fairness, conciliation, fostering understanding—won’t be easy. Some players in the Burnaby gay-tolerance saga appear more bent on seeing the other side shamed than in making amends. Yet a leaner, more efficient human rights apparatus could be healthy for everyone involved. Commissions could return to the task of ensuring minorities aren’t shut out of jobs, housing, goods and services. The rest of us would just have to find a way to get along.

Earlier this month, a Paris court found fashion designer John Galliano guilty of “public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity,” for his now-notorious anti-Semitic rant in a Paris café.

It was, of course, a crime for which the disgraced designer had months ago been sentenced in the court of public opinion, and rightly so. The diatribe in which he slurred “I love Hitler” in the faces of a couple of astonished women was caught on video and later posted online. After Galliano’s arrest in February, for which he was dropped both as head of the House of Dior as well as his own eponymous label, his career prospects seemed forever dashed. But now that the court case is over and the dust is beginning to settle, some fashion world observers are speculating that a comeback might be in the cards. “Given how superficial the fashion world can be—and how cynical—it could be that Galliano’s very notoriety makes him a short-term money-spinner,” Telegraph deputy fashion editor Luke Leitch wrote last week after the verdict came down.

The court found the designer guilty after hearing testimony from patrons who’d experienced Galliano’s abuse on several separate occasions over the past year. Plaintiff Geraldine Bloch testified that the designer remarked on her “dirty Jewish face” and called her a “ ‘dirty whore’ at least a thousand times” in a 45-minute rant as she shared a drink with a friend on the patio of La Perle, an establishment located in the Marais, the lively gay district and historic Jewish quarter of Paris. And another victim, Fatiha Oummedour, told the court of a separate occasion on which an inebriated Galliano taunted her as “ugly Jewish” at the same café a few months earlier.

Galliano was given a suspended $8,100 fine, which means the conviction will appear on his record but he will not be required to pay the court unless he reoffends in the next five years. As punishments go, it was a remarkably lenient one. The designer’s crime carried a maximum penalty of $30,000 and a six-month prison sentence. The presiding judge, who noted the “values of respect and tolerance to which the defendant generally adheres” in his work, also stated the British designer had “sufficient awareness of his act despite his triple addiction and fragile state.” During testimony, Galliano expressed deep regret over his actions but claimed he had no memory of the events, due to an addiction to alcohol, sedatives and Valium. His lawyer also highlighted the fact that, since the scandal broke, he has spent two separate periods in rehab, one in Arizona and the other in Switzerland.

How far these high-end detox stints actually went toward curing the fashion icon of his professed anti-Semitism is not entirely clear, but Galliano certainly has his apologists. Shortly after the scandal, the New York stylist Patricia Field dismissed his outbursts, calling them “theatre” and “farce.” And more recently, Kate Moss employed Galliano to design the much-anticipated dress for her wedding to Jamie Hince, guitarist for the British band the Kills. “When I put the dress on, I’m really happy. I forget about everything. [I wanted] a classic Galliano, those chiffon thirties kind,” the supermodel, who rarely gives interviews, gushed in U.S. Vogue. Galliano, for his part, was slightly more contrite. “She dared me to be John Galliano again,” he said of Moss. “I couldn’t pick up a pencil. It’s been my creative rehab.”

The July wedding, attended by such fashion luminaries as U.S. Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Mario Testino and Marc Jacobs, was Galliano’s first major appearance since his arrest and dismissal. When the father of the bride thanked the designer in his speech, Galliano received a standing ovation, moving him to tears and making his widely rumoured comeback seem all but imminent.

It wouldn’t be the first time Galliano came back from the dead. Brought up in hardscrabble south London, the son of a plumber from Gibraltar and his Spanish wife, Galliano has long been a beloved underdog in the rarefied world of haute couture. In his youth, he found a champion in Wintour (who helped resurrect his career in the early 1990s by arranging financial backing after he ran into money troubles), and his legendary penchant for outlandishness—both behavioural and sartorial—was long regarded as simply part of the eccentric Galliano package.

While some members of the fashion elite seem willing to welcome Galliano back into the fold, it seems unlikely others will soon forget his bad behaviour. When the scandal broke, the Jewish actress Natalie Portman, the face of the perfume Miss Dior Cherie, released a statement saying she was “disgusted” by Galliano’s comments. And the Guardian’s fashion columnist Hadley Freeman (who is also Jewish) condemned those fashion writers and celebrities who attempt “to conjure up pity for Galliano claiming that he’d always been encouraged to be ‘controversial’ by his bosses and, golly gosh, it’s so lonely at the top where all one can do for entertainment is spout hate speech.”

Whether last week’s lenient verdict will lead to another high profile post for Galliano anytime soon is not yet clear. But his lawyer, Aurelien Hamelle, speaking after the trial, confirmed things were looking up. “This is a good decision. It amounts to no penalty,” adding his client’s mood was “serene, relieved and pleased that this is all behind him. He hopes to face the future with happiness and forgiveness.” Amazing how quickly the spectre of such ugliness can fade in an industry obsessed with beauty.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/the-resurrection-of-john-galliano/feed/5Will anonymity and hyperlinks be illegal in Canada?http://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/will-anonymity-and-hyperlinks-be-illegal-in-canada/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/will-anonymity-and-hyperlinks-be-illegal-in-canada/#commentsTue, 10 May 2011 21:20:22 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=191023How an obscure provision in a Conservative crime bill could change the Internet in Canada

]]>I’ve blogged before about Stephen Harper’s tough-guy campaign promise to bundle up and ram through a bunch of crime bills within 100 days of gaining his majority. One of the three bills he’s mushing together deals with online crime, focusing of course on the usual boogeymen: child porn and hate speech. I’ve pointed to one atrocious aspect therein—Lawful Access, which will allow police to demand all sorts of information about Canadians from their ISPs without having to bother with pesky warrants.

Here are two more reasons to be very concerned about/appalled with the upcoming legislation:

Clause 5 of the bill provides that the offences of public incitement of hatred and wilful promotion of hatred may be committed… by creating a hyperlink that directs web surfers to a website where hate material is posted.

That’s just stunningly ignorant. Let’s put aside the ridiculous leap of reason that equates linking to something with saying something, and instead direct our attention to the sheer stupidity of this law on technological grounds. Namely, we usually do not have control of the things we link to. They can change. So if something I link to later becomes “hate material” then I will suddenly be guilty of a hate crime. Any sound legal advice in a country where such a law exists would be to stop using hyperlinks entirely, as they present too great a liability. And that would sort of kind of make the Internet itself illegal.

It can make anonymity and pseudonyms illegal.

Here’s the Library of Parliament explaining a change from an earlier version of the bill:

…regarding the offences of sending a message in a false name (via) telegram, radio and telephone. Clause 11 of the bill amends those offences by removing the references to those specific communication technologies and, for some of those offences, substituting a reference to any means of telecommunication. As a result, it will be possible to lay charges in respect of those offences regardless of the transmission method or technology used.

Wow. No “false names” on the Internet (or through telegrams, which bothers me less). Real names only kids—that’ll thwart the perverts!

To be clear: I do not believe that the Harper government is plotting to criminalize the Internet itself. Hey, Lawful Access started as Liberal legislaion! But whoever wrote it, it’s a terrible and stupid piece of law, and one that would never have survived committee in one piece. But Stephen Harper has promised to ram this stuff through, and now he has the majority to do it.

]]>Former University of Saskatchewan instructor Terrence Tremaine will have his day in court for charges of spreading hate speech, reported the Leader-Post.

On Mar. 11, Regina Provincial Court Judge Bruce Henning decided that the crown had provided enough evidence at a preliminary hearing to proceed to a trial. A court date has not yet been set.

Though the hearing for the case began in October 2009, the case has been adjourned repeatedly for continuation.

In the past Tremaine has declared himself to be the leader of the National-Socialist Party of Canada, an unregistered political party which is dedicated to white sovereignty. Tremaine was fired from the U of S in 2005 after the school was informed of comments he’d posted on a white supremacist site.

Doug Christie, a lawyer practising in B.C. who once called anti-hate legislation “a massive waste of police resources” according to the Leader-Post, will represent Tremaine in court. Christie’s previous clients include the late First Nations Leader David Ahenakew, who faced charges of inciting hatred which were later dismissed.

]]>Ezra Levant, who was present at the venue for tonight’s aborted Ann Coulter talk at the University of Ottawa, spotted my quickie weblog entry about the cancelled event and had me chat briefly with the leggy agitator. Coulter tells Maclean’s she never had the chance to move on from a private dinner reception at which she was signing books, meeting local conservatives, and waiting for the all-clear from her bodyguard, who was on the scene at the university. “I was just reviewing my speech. It was a fine little speech, and by the way, I cut it down so we could have an extensive question-and-answer period. I gathered that I was going to have a very exciting crowd tonight.”

The police, Coulter says, “had been warning my bodyguard all day that they were putting up [messages] on Facebook: ‘Bring rocks, bring sticks, you gotta hurt Ann Coulter tonight, don’t let her speak.’ And the cops eventually said, we’ve got a bad feeling, this isn’t gonna happen. And they shut it down.”

Coulter agrees with the suggestion that conservative speakers face greater dangers and nuisances in trying to encounter audiences on university campuses. “I speak at a lot of college campuses and I need a bodyguard… Michael Moore does not; Judy Rebick does not. I think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could have spoken tonight with less controversy.” She dismisses the possibility, however, that things are ever likely to change. “Unfortunately, conservatives are too polite, so they will never get a taste of their own medicine in that regard, in terms of angry mobs with sticks and rocks.”

She accuses the University of Ottawa’s academic vice-president, Francois Houle, of “inspiring hatred” toward her with his epistolary warning to her that she needed to be conscious of Canada’s criminal prohibitions of hate speech. Indeed, she says she intends, with Levant’s help, to ask police to proceed with exactly the same charges against Houle.

“He described the law to me very carefully—any speech that incites hatred toward someone based on membership in an identifiable group can be criminally prosecuted. Well, before I even set foot in Canada, he had identified me as having criminal proclivities because I belong to an identifiable group: conservatives. Or it could be because I’m a Christian, I’m a Presbyterian. I’m a female conservative. If what Francois Houle did to me is not a hate crime, then nothing is.”

After the event was cancelled by the police, Coulter says she went to her hotel room to relax and had a surreal moment. “I was watching the local news, which was all hockey and Ann Coulter, and some nut came on claiming that he was the organizer behind my speech. [murmurs in background] OK, his name is Craig Chandler. I sent an e-mail to my bodyguard saying Craig Chandler is disinvited from the event in Calgary. He’s on TV claiming to be the organizer and denouncing me!”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/coulter-the-she-devil-in-her-own-words-2/feed/25Coulter: the she-devil in her own wordshttp://www.macleans.ca/authors/colby-cosh/coulter-the-she-devil-in-her-own-words/
http://www.macleans.ca/authors/colby-cosh/coulter-the-she-devil-in-her-own-words/#commentsWed, 24 Mar 2010 03:38:02 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=117409COLBY COSH talks to Ann Coulter after the cancelled University of Ottawa event

]]>Ezra Levant, who was present at the venue for tonight’s aborted Ann Coulter talk at the University of Ottawa, spotted my quickie weblog entry about the cancelled event and had me chat briefly with the leggy agitator. Coulter tells Maclean’s she never had the chance to move on from a private dinner reception at which she was signing books, meeting local conservatives, and waiting for the all-clear from her bodyguard, who was on the scene at the university. “I was just reviewing my speech. It was a fine little speech, and by the way, I cut it down so we could have an extensive question-and-answer period. I gathered that I was going to have a very exciting crowd tonight.”

The police, Coulter says, “had been warning my bodyguard all day that they were putting up [messages] on Facebook: ‘Bring rocks, bring sticks, you gotta hurt Ann Coulter tonight, don’t let her speak.’ And the cops eventually said, we’ve got a bad feeling, this isn’t gonna happen. And they shut it down.”

Coulter agrees with the suggestion that conservative speakers face greater dangers and nuisances in trying to encounter audiences on university campuses. “I speak at a lot of college campuses and I need a bodyguard… Michael Moore does not; Judy Rebick does not. I think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could have spoken tonight with less controversy.” She dismisses the possibility, however, that things are ever likely to change. “Unfortunately, conservatives are too polite, so they will never get a taste of their own medicine in that regard, in terms of angry mobs with sticks and rocks.”

She accuses the University of Ottawa’s academic vice-president, Francois Houle, of “inspiring hatred” toward her with his epistolary warning to her that she needed to be conscious of Canada’s criminal prohibitions of hate speech. Indeed, she says she intends, with Levant’s help, to ask police to proceed with exactly the same charges against Houle.

“He described the law to me very carefully—any speech that incites hatred toward someone based on membership in an identifiable group can be criminally prosecuted. Well, before I even set foot in Canada, he had identified me as having criminal proclivities because I belong to an identifiable group: conservatives. Or it could be because I’m a Christian, I’m a Presbyterian. I’m a female conservative. If what Francois Houle did to me is not a hate crime, then nothing is.”

After the event was cancelled by the police, Coulter says she went to her hotel room to relax and had a surreal moment. “I was watching the local news, which was all hockey and Ann Coulter, and some nut came on claiming that he was the organizer behind my speech. [murmurs in background] OK, his name is Craig Chandler. I sent an e-mail to my bodyguard saying Craig Chandler is disinvited from the event in Calgary. He’s on TV claiming to be the organizer and denouncing me!”

]]>Ann Coulter has responded to the University of Ottawa’s provost Francois Houle suggestion that she choose her words carefully, unless she wants to wind up with criminal charges. Coulter is scheduled to speak at the University of Ottawa this evening. In an email to the Ottawa Citizen, Coulter says that Houle is promoting “hatred” and “violence” against people with conservative views. She also told the newspaper that she would like to file a human rights complaint. Coulter spoke at the University of Western Ontario Monday evening, and will also be speaking at the University of Calgary this week.

“Now that the provost has instructed me on the criminal speech laws he apparently believes I have a proclivity (to break), despite knowing nothing about my speech, I see that he is guilty of promoting hatred against an identifiable group: conservatives,” Coulter wrote in an e-mail on Monday.

The Citizen had requested a telephone interview with Coulter. Instead, the newspaper received the e-mail from the author.

She questioned whether every speaker booked at the university received a similar warning or just the conservative ones.

“The provost simply believes and is publicizing his belief that conservatives are more likely to commit hate crimes in their speeches. Not only does this promote hatred against conservatives, but it promotes violence against conservatives,” Coulter wrote.

She added she would ask the human rights commission to investigate, but didn’t specify which one.

“I was hoping for a fruit basket upon my arrival in Canada, not a threat to criminally prosecute me,” Coulter said.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Coulter notoriously wrote of Muslim countries, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” She has also suggested that Muslims use “flying carpets,” as opposed to airplanes.

At Coulter’s University of Western Ontario talk, a Muslim student challenged her on her previous comments. The student said, as reported by the Sun media chain, “As a 17-year-old student of this university, Muslim, should I be converted to Christianity? Second of all, since I don’t have a magic carpet, what other modes do you suggest.” To which Coulter responded, “take a camel.”

]]>It isn’t just the student union that is having a fit over Ann Coulter’s planned visit to the University of Ottawa. Francois Houle, vice-president academic and provost at the U of O, has sent Coulter an email warning her to watch her mouth, lest she find herself behind bars.

I would, however, like to inform you, or perhaps remind you, that our domestic laws, both provincial and federal, delineate freedom of expression (or “free speech”) in a manner that is somewhat different than the approach taken in the United States. I therefore encourage you to educate yourself, if need be, as to what is acceptable in Canada and to do so before your planned visit here.

You will realize that Canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. For example, promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges. Outside of the criminal realm, Canadian defamation laws also limit freedom of expression and may differ somewhat from those to which you are accustomed. I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind.

There is little question that Coulter has written many things considered provocative, rude and inflammatory. For a few examples see here and here. But has she ever said anything criminal? Something so offensive that it would actually attract the attention of the police? Our criminal hate-speech provisions no doubt require an arbitrary line be drawn between what is acceptable and what is not. But the way the law has evolved is that it has become reserved for the most egregious and vile offences, like this case.

When Section 319 of the criminal code, the hate speech provisions, was subject to a Charter challenge and reviewed by the Supreme Court some two decades ago, it survived only because the judges reasoned that, as written, it should not have an overly broad interpretation, and that only the most extreme cases should be subject to prosecution. Such cases typically include a sustained effort by the accused to willfully promote hatred over a period of time, and, in such a way that there would be no redeemable political speech. Hate speech has to be near fully void of relevant comment on issues of public interest. In fact this is written right into the criminal code and anyone charged with promoting hatred has recourse to several defences. The defences include truth, commenting on religious topics, making comments that stem from religious beliefs, and making comments that are on a topic of public interest.

Even if Coulter repeated every inflammatory thing she ever wrote during her visit in Canada, she likely still wouldn’t be charged. And, if she was, she would have several legal defences at her disposal.

Provost Houle wants Coulter to educate herself on our hate speech laws, I would suggest he take his own advice.

]]>It isn’t just the student union that is having a fit over Ann Coulter’s planned visit to the University of Ottawa. Francois Houle, vice-president academic and provost at the U of O, has sent Coulter an email warning her to watch her mouth, lest she find herself behind bars.

I would, however, like to inform you, or perhaps remind you, that our domestic laws, both provincial and federal, delineate freedom of expression (or “free speech”) in a manner that is somewhat different than the approach taken in the United States. I therefore encourage you to educate yourself, if need be, as to what is acceptable in Canada and to do so before your planned visit here.

You will realize that Canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. For example, promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges. Outside of the criminal realm, Canadian defamation laws also limit freedom of expression and may differ somewhat from those to which you are accustomed. I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind.

There is little question that Coulter has written many things considered provocative, rude and inflammatory. For a few examples see here and here. But has she ever said anything criminal? Something so offensive that it would actually attract the attention of the police? Our criminal hate-speech provisions no doubt require an arbitrary line be drawn between what is acceptable and what is not. But the way the law has evolved is that it has become reserved for the most egregious and vile offences, like this case.

When Section 319 of the criminal code, the hate speech provisions, was subject to a Charter challenge and reviewed by the Supreme Court some two decades ago, it survived only because the judges reasoned that, as written, it should not have an overly broad interpretation, and that only the most extreme cases should be subject to prosecution. Such cases typically include a sustained effort by the accused to willfully promote hatred over a period of time, and, in such a way that there would be no redeemable political speech. Hate speech has to be near fully void of relevant comment on issues of public interest. In fact this is written right into the criminal code and anyone charged with promoting hatred has recourse to several defences. The defences include truth, commenting on religious topics, making comments that stem from religious beliefs, and making comments that are on a topic of public interest.

Even if Coulter repeated every inflammatory thing she ever wrote during her visit in Canada, she likely still wouldn’t be charged. And, if she was, she would have several legal defences at her disposal.

Provost Houle wants Coulter to educate herself on our hate speech laws, I would suggest he take his own advice.

A York University student is being investigated by the Ontario police hate crimes unit in relation to postings on a website called Filthy Jewish Terrorists, the National Postreported last week. On the website, Salman Hossain appears to have made several remarks supporting the genocide of Jewish people.

According to the Post, Hossain “refers to Jews as ‘diseased and filthy,’ ‘the scum of the earth,’ ‘psychotic’ and ‘mass murderers’ and writes that ‘a genocide should be perpetrated against the Jewish populations of North America and Europe.’ ”

Section 318 of the criminal code prohibits the promotion of genocide, and section 319 prohibits the “willful” promotion of hatred against identifiable groups. Hossain, who is being investigated by the Hate Crimes Extremism Investigative Team, first came to the attention of police in October 2007. Back then he was probed by the RCMP for internet writings that supported attacking Canadian soldiers on Canadian soil. No charges were laid in that case. At the time Hossain was a University of Toronto student.

In response to the allegations, York University says it will conduct its own investigation to determine if Hossain is in breach of the university’s code of conduct, which could lead to an immediate suspension while a panel of students and faculty consider his case.

UPDATE: Yesterday, York University officially suspended Salman Hossain. He will have to face a disciplinary panel, and is not allowed on the campus until that time. Spokesman Keith Marnoch told the National Post that the panel has to meet within 60 days, but that it should happen much sooner. He also emphasized safety concerns regarding the case, “We want all of our students, all of our community members, to be safe and knowing that they can be.”

The Charter of Rights can’t be used willy-nilly by content creators in magazines and newspapers as a shield against tribunal oversight, but

The tribunals have to confine themselves strictly to the powers granted them by statute, defer to Charter values, respect the presumption of innocence, and in general act a lot less like a cross between a military junta and a three-ring circus.

In 2002 Red Deer preacher Stephen Boissoin had written a sweaty, sulfurous letter about the Great Gay Conspiracy to the local daily paper (pause for ironic smirk: it’s called the Advocate). Among other things, Boissoin denounced the spectacle of “men kissing men”, which suggests he may not know his way around the synoptic Gospels too well. In any event, a panel of the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission found him guilty of discrimination-by-the-word, and he was subjected to a fine, prior restraint on his future speech, and a demand for a written apology.

Justice Wilson found that while the speech provisions in the Alberta human rights statute pass Charter muster under the principles of the Supreme Court’s Taylor decision, he put a lot of practical problems in the path of future complainants. A province, Wilson observed, isn’t allowed to duplicate the Criminal Code provisions against hate speech. It’s only allowed to suppress hateful speech that can also be shown to encourage discrimination in the specific areas that lie within provincial powers and are enumerated in the statute—i.e., housing, employment, access to goods and services.

Wilson thus ended up throwing several witnesses who testified against Boissoin overboard: the ex-cop who thought Boissoin’s anti-gay babblings might make teens “act out”, for example, and the shrink who warned that the Reverend’s letter might provoke a second Columbine. (Untold thousands have read the letter who wouldn’t otherwise have seen it, precisely as a consequence of the proceeding against Boissoin, but it doesn’t yet appear to have played a role in any school shootings.) Wilson has thus made expert evidence in future tribunal proceedings a lot harder to come by: the logic of his decision suggests that complainants will no longer be able to round up every bleeding-heart social scientist or self-styled hate expert they can find, but will have to provide evidence of potential economic impacts from hate speech.

Wilson also reaffirmed that the standard of judicial review for Alberta tribunal rulings is a low one, requiring the appellant to raise questions of mere “correctness” in matters of law; he beat up the panel for some of its one-sided interpretations of the evidence against Boissoin; he emphasized that hate speech isn’t hate speech under Taylor unless it’s “unusually strong” and appeals to “deep-felt” emotions; he notes that tribunals must take note of not only the majority decision in Taylor, but also not-yet-Chief Justice McLachlin’s monumental dissent warning against vagueness and subjectivity; he observes that Taylor also requires hate speech to have been repetitive; he suggests that the law does not generally concern itself with “puny anonymities”, but only with speech that is likely to be influential and dangerous in some way; and he notes that the AHRCC panel had no statutory warrant for any of the punishments it levied on Boissoin.

And believe it or not, I am leaving some criticisms out. The Commission has a Herculean amount of procedural and constitutional cleanup ahead if it hopes to scrutinize speech and press activity in Alberta. Which is good. It would be better still for the legislature to take the “fundamental freedoms” in the Charter as seriously as other provinces do, and eliminate the Commission’s jurisdiction over the press altogether, but it seems that won’t happen while Ed Stelmach is premier.

]]> A former University of Saskatchewan lecturer charged with spreading hate and breaching his bail conditions is being released from custody.

Terrence Tremaine appeared via video in a Regina court where he has been ordered to stay away from computers or any devices that can access the Internet. Tremaine was arrested earlier this summer for allegedly breaching previous bail conditions not to post messages online.

The conditions were put in place after Tremaine was charged with spreading hatred in connection with comments posted on the Internet between Feb. 2004 and Nov. 2007.

He has pleaded not guilty and is to be back in court for a preliminary hearing Oct. 19.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/education/uniandcollege/former-usask-lecturer-accused-of-spreading-hatred-free-on-bail/feed/2Down with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and its modern analogues!http://www.macleans.ca/general/down-with-the-smoot-hawley-tariff-and-its-modern-analogues/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/down-with-the-smoot-hawley-tariff-and-its-modern-analogues/#commentsThu, 27 Nov 2008 18:03:56 +0000http://macleans.wordpress.com/?p=20240Must-reads: Vaughn Palmer on cutting costs in Victoria; Christie Blatchford on the “S.M.” trial.In the spirit of brotherhood, we will now destroy youThe Conservatives revoke the opposition’s allowance,…

In the spirit of brotherhood, we will now destroy youThe Conservatives revoke the opposition’s allowance, and other random federal matters.

The Vancouver Sun’s Barbara Yaffe chooses an unfortunate day to marvel at the “surprising air of maturity and confidence” Stephen Harper is exhibiting as he attempts to deal with the economic crisis—“in sharp contrast to [his] past political demeanour, widely criticized as petty, nasty and excessively partisan.” We assume Harper decided to bankrupt the opposition parties after deadline. Bummer. (Also, Tony Clement is not one of Harper’s “strongest performers.” That’s a ridiculous thing to say anywhere, but it’s an especially ridiculous thing to say if, like Yaffe, you support the Insite safe injection project and if, also like Yaffe, you have just applauded the government for abandoning its opposition to Insite—which is news to us, incidentally.)

The National Post’s John Ivison looks at the potential effects of revoking public financing for political parties, and sees no way the Liberals can “meekly stand in the House of Commons and support the measure as its fair share of the economic plan.” It represents upwards of 60 per cent of their funding base! “The chances of another general election in the near future have always seemed remote, on the basis that none of the combatants could afford it,” Ivison notes. But “with this proposal, they can’t afford not to.” We’re sure they’ll work something out.

Harper has already avoided Mackenzie King’s “foolhardy equanimity” in the face of an economic downturn, TheGlobe and Mail’s Lawrence Martin observes; he clearly grasps there is a problem. But peril still lies ahead. For example, Harper could make the same mistake Mackenzie King did when his “obstreperousness” scuttled a deal that would have exempted Canada from the “crippling” Smoot-Hawley tariff in exchange for cooperation on building the St. Lawrence Seaway. Messrs. Smoot and Hawley are safely dead, rest assured. But—and this is Martin’s point—protectionists still lie in wait behind every door, and friendly relations with Washington remain absolutely essential to Canada’s economic security.

The Toronto Star’s James Travers employs the following metaphors in constructing a nearly unreadable column about what the government is doing about the economy, the point of which seems to be that we shouldn’t bail out the auto industry: “euthanizing” Parliament; political “timetables”, one of which “takes its urgency from the financial crisis now sprinting around the globe” while the other “marches to the ominous drumbeat of future consequences”; “tummy tucks” to “reduce the profile of the bulging gut of entitlements … for bureaucrats and politicians” instead of “national reconstructivesurgery”; public money “gush[ing] out of the twisted federal pipeline in time to soften”—soften, mind you, not dampen or extinguish—the impact of the recession; and “attaching the auto industry to an intravenous dollar drip.”

Elsewhere in the Star, Haroon Siddiqui argues the recent furor over human rights commissions and their jurisdiction over hate speech “cannot possibly be papered over by restricting the human rights tribunal’s mandate, or tightening the definition of hate,” as proposed in a recent study by University of Windsor law professor Richard Moon. Instead, “all the key players need to rise above their self-serving agendas and pursue the common good, which is often best advanced through self-restraint than under the hammer of the law.” We don’t share this vision of Canada as a kindergarten classroom, but fair enough. What we really don’t get is, if what Maclean’s did was so awful—heck, none other than Alan Borovy appears in Siddiqui’s article to denounce Mark Steyn’s now-notorious book excerpt—then why didn’t the commissions find against our most benevolent employer?

The Toronto Sun’s Peter Worthington disagrees with every single word of Siddiqui’s column.

Provincial affairs
The Vancouver Sun’s Vaughn Palmer believes he has discovered where the B.C. government intends to focus its cost-cutting measures. “Not spending on travel. Not the recent boost in the pay scale for senior public servants. Not government advertising,” he writes. “Nope, the Liberals are aiming to hold the line on funding for the eight independent watchdogs who keep an eye on the provincial government.” And this “after all of them have spent weeks in budget preparations … with no such edict in place,” he notes.

Campbell’s “more evident lapses in judgment,” including whopping pay raises for various bureaucrats, provide a legitimate opening for NDP leader Carole James, Gary Mason argues in the Globe—and poll numbers suggest the premier’s office is very much in play. Especially if Campbell adopts “a particularly negative tone,” as it seems to Mason he might, he believes James will be able to “frame herself as the compassionate democrat” British Columbians are apparently thirsting for.

In the Calgary Herald, Nigel Hannaford approves of the “ballsy” pro-life protestors who intend to take their “Genocide Awareness Project” onto the University of Calgary campus despite warnings they face “arrest, fines or a civil lawsuit,” not to mention “suspension or expulsion” from the university. The least U of C could do is provide a semi-plausible explanation for suppressing free speech on its campus, he argues. Instead they’re implying some kind of riot might erupt—“which seems a tad disingenuous,” Hannaford argues, since “it didn’t happen the first five times” the group protested there.

John Tory’s “self-imposed deadline to get back into the Ontario Legislature” is approaching, the Globe’s Murray Campbell observes, and none of his MPPs seems particularly willing to fall on his or her sword for his benefit. Perhaps, some believe, it is at long last time for him to go. On the other hand, one supporter tells Campbell, many grassroots supporters “don’t even know that John Tory doesn’t have a seat in the House”… which, just to be clear, is an argument for his staying on.

Duly noted
The Globe’s Christie Blatchford reports from the Ottawa murder trial of “S.M.,” who is, by his own lawyer’s admission, “very guilty of manslaughter”—and who may, at the jury’s discretion, be guilty of murder—in the stabbing death of 22-year-old Michael Oatway aboard an Ottawa city bus in September 2006. Blatchford describes their encounter, during which S.M. tried to rob Oatway for no apparent reason except he was angry at a former girlfriend, as a moment where “cowardice met courage.”